The Bet
by catfoxy
Summary: When you bet against Ethan, don't expect to win. Brandt should have known. He *really* should have known.


_Author's Note:_

_Alright, this is to 98% a Mission Impossible story, but with a twist towards the end. Not enough of a twist to call it a crossover, but let's just say there is an idea in here that can be considered a 'wink' towards another movie that TC did. You'll see what I mean. ;)_

_Summary: _

_When you bet against Ethan, don't expect to win. Brandt should have known. He *really* should have known._

**The Bet**

San Diego was a nice city. But the nicest thing about it, as far as Brandt was concerned, was the fact that they had just finished their latest mission here without getting shot at, blown up or even scratched. That in itself made Brandt consider the place 'okay', as far as he was concerned.

And now, with the IMF having granted them a night off, it was time for some relaxation – or whatever the people in this area considered relaxation. In the part of town they had ended up, there was not much else besides fishing and the Navy down here.

It had been Ethan's turn to select their waterhole for the team night out. And to his team's amazement, Ethan had rather quickly chosen a place called 'Kansas City BBQ", right down at the waterfront of the San Diego Harbour.

Brandt had asked Ethan why a place in San Diego would be called "_Kansas_ City BBQ". To which Ethan had answered with a chuckle, that he honestly didn't know, but that that's always been the name of this bar, aside from a short period in the late 80's, when the place had been unofficially called "The Flyby Bar & Grill".

Brandt simply shook his head in wonder at that explanation, still not so sure about this place, but since he did 'dangerous' for a living, Brandt was willing to trust his team leader's choice and give it a try. So they went inside.

It was a crowded place, with lots of men and women, many Navy, some Air Force, some civilians, and all of them clearly having a good time. Brandt was starting to think that Ethan's choice might not have been a bad one, after all.

It turned out to be an unusual, but nice place for a team night out. And even as far as drinks went, the place sure delivered. Soon they were having a great time at their table, and generally enjoying the evening. Until they saw Brandt's eyes following one of the many rather good-looking women in this bar, as she happened to be walking by their table.

Ethan also noticed it, and with a chuckle he gave Brandt a piece of friendly advice.

"Easy there, Brandt, you better keep your eyes to yourself, there's probably a guy around for that lady," Ethan said jovially.

Benji immediately grinned slyly. "Yeah, like that would stop any of you guys if you really tried."

Jane couldn't help a snort, which almost made her splutter the drink she had been about to swallow.

Ethan was inclined to go with Jane's reaction, but – having already downed the latest sip from his beer bottle – he settled for a smirk.

Brandt, not one to let some backseat criticism get him down that easily, simply went on:

"Hey, I was merely checking to see if she had any concealed weapons on her. Don't want anyone to get a jump on us, now do we?" Brandt was quick to come up with an excuse for having been caught. But when he saw the knowing looks from his team-mates, he gave in with a sigh.

"Ah hell, alright…so I _was_ checking her out, okay? But hey, from what I can see," and he made a show of looking around the room once more, "most of the women in here are either stiff-necked officers, or belong to some hotshot Navy guy, anyway. With that kind of a target zone, probably not even Ethan would land a date in here."

Jane automatically rolled her eyes at Brandt's bold statement.

'Oh boy, here we go…'

Ethan, however, simply tilted his head in amusement. Brandt saw it.

"What…you think that ain't true? Come on, with this crowd, even your charm would not get you a foot in the door."

Ethan looked like he was about to open his mouth, as if he was _this_ close to taking up the argument. In the end, though, he seemed to keep his first instinctive response to himself, and instead he came up with a more diplomatic one:

"It's possible."

"What, you getting a date in here?" Brandt asked in disbelief.

A slow nod from Ethan.

Benji was now looking back and forth between Ethan and Brandt with a curious look on his face.

And even Jane appeared to want to see where this was going.

"You mean you could get a date in here, right now? Just like that?" Brandt clarified, just so there weren't any misunderstandings.

"Well…" Ethan began, not sure yet how to best put this.

"Okay, hotshot…let's put this to the test." Brandt was now fully focused on this. He actually put down his beer, as his eyes came to rest on Ethan's rather confident expression.

Brandt thought carefully for a moment, then he had an idea.

"Right. Let's make it a bet…the winner gets to wave the bill for the drinks."

Ethan hesitated for a moment, but then a smile slowly crept up on the corner of his mouth. It should have been a warning to Brandt. It should have. But it wasn't.

"Okay. What are the rules?" Ethan leaned slightly forward, his focus now on Brandt, accepting the challenge.

"I pick a girl, any girl in the room. You go over to her and get her phone number as proof that she wants you to call her later." Brandt explained. Then he quickly added as an afterthought, "And I'll know if you cheat by writing down a fake number; I can have Benji check the phone register." Brandt's smile grew to shark-like proportions.

Ethan seemed to ponder Brandt's rules for a moment, but then he nodded.

"The bet's on."

Ethan then asked Brandt to choose a girl, any girl in the room.

Brandt started looking. There was the barkeep girl…nah…too easy. There were some tourists near the windows… nah…gotta be tougher than that…

Oh yeah.

There. At the end of the bar, at some distance behind Ethan.

An elegant blonde lady. Feisty looking.

In fact, Brandt just remembered that he had noticed how this very lady had already sent several Navy hotshots packing this evening. If those guys - who probably did flirting for a living - couldn't crack her, chances were Ethan couldn't either.

"That one." Brandt announced triumphantly.

Seeing that Brandt was looking at someone past his shoulder, Ethan turned around in his chair to look where Brandt was subtly pointing. Confidently, Ethan followed Brandt's gaze.

And he had to fight with all he had not to show a reaction on his face, as he suddenly spotted Brandt's choice.

Damn, he really hadn't noticed that one. Had she been sitting there long?

"That one?" Ethan asked, and you could now hear a slight tone of shaky surprise in his voice, but only if you knew him really well.

Jane, too, was now looking at the lady that Ethan would have to target. She could see that the woman appeared to be deep in thought, obviously not in the mood for company, and not even taking notice of anyone else around her.

Brandt sure had picked a tough candidate. Jane almost felt a bit sorry for Ethan.

Brandt was now looking at Ethan, as if he expected Ethan to put up his hands in an 'okay, sorry, you win, I give up' gesture any second now. But after a moment, during which none of them were able to read the expression on their team leader's face, Ethan suddenly turned his gaze towards the target once more.

"Okay."

And with that their team leader was moving smoothly out of his seat, getting up with a mysterious smile, and walking across the room, before any of them could even close their mouths from their astonishment at seeing him actually do it.

They watched Ethan walk over to the woman.

They couldn't see the reaction on the woman's face as Ethan walked up to her, because Ethan was unfortunately – deliberately? – blocking their view, but they could tell that she had noticed him as he came to a halt next to her. Ethan continued to stand beside her bar stool for another moment, and he was obviously talking to her.

"She won't even let him sit down" Brandt chuckled towards Jane with a smirk, as the moment grew longer.

And they continued to watch.

When Ethan eventually moved a little, they could finally see the lady's expression. And they saw…a relaxed smile on the woman's face.

'Whoa' Benji thought, and he immediately threw a quick glance towards Jane and Brandt, to see if they were seeing what he was seeing. Judging by their stunned expressions, they were.

After another moment, and what looked like a curious eyebrow-raise on behalf of the woman at the bar, there was even some laughter shared between Ethan and the lady.

Brandt almost couldn't believe his eyes.

They then watched as Ethan actually sat down on the edge of the bar stool next to the woman. They couldn't hear what was happening over there, but Ethan looked completely relaxed and unhurried. The woman seemed be fiddling with her beer mat, but they couldn't see what exactly she was doing with it. Then, after not even two minutes, they saw Ethan hold out his hand in an obvious offer.

And the lady actually took his hand - gracefully letting him help her off the chair, before following Ethan through the crowd into their direction.

At that point, Brandt was no longer sure if he should have had that last beer. He was clearly imagining things. This could NOT be happening for real.

With a winning smile, Ethan gave a long, meaningful glance in their direction as he walked towards them, taking in the completely staggered looks from his team. Then, without even breaking his stride, Ethan led the lady _past_ their table. Keeping his left hand gentlemanly on the small of the lady's back, he merely spared a smooth flick of his left wrist to drop a small beer mat from his free hand onto their table, as he moved past them.

Brandt couldn't look at it. His eyes were still mesmerized, following Ethan's retreating form.

So Jane moved instead. She picked up the beer mat, turning it around so they all could see it right side up.

On the beer mat - written in a handwriting that clearly was not Ethan's - was a telephone number.

In the end it was Benji, who first found his voice again. And he asked what they all were thinking at that moment:

"How on earth did he DO that?"

-o-

Outside the bar, the lady was still smiling at Ethan.

And then she burst out into a fit of laughter that she really could not keep in for one second longer.

Ethan, too, had a hard time keeping upright, he was chuckling so hard.

When they finally stopped laughing for long enough to catch their breaths, the woman was the first to actually come up for words:

"Do you wanna tell your friends, or should I?" the lady was still wiping tears of laughter out of her eyes.

"Honestly, I'm not sure…" Ethan answered, his voice clearly still close to losing it again any second, "this is just too good … did you see the look on his face?" and with that Ethan burst out with another fit of laughter.

The lady couldn't help but agree. The look on his friends' faces had been priceless. It didn't get much better than that. Or, wait...

"Hey, you could have shocked him even more by giving him my phone number without even walking over to me, you know?" the woman told Ethan with a chuckle as the idea hit her. That would have been a hoot.

"Oh yeah, that would have been funny, too…why didn't I think of that?" Ethan made a show of hitting himself upside the head with his hand, before he focused on her again, "Looks like you're still the smarter one out of the two of us, huh?"

"And don't you ever forget it, Ethan Hunt." She deliberately pronounced every syllable of his name, like she was still getting used to it.

"Don't worry Charlotte, I'll never forget that."

Ethan, too, put an emphasis on her name, but in his case, it was more of a tease, because he remembered how she truly hated to be called by her full name. And she picked him up on it immediately, as he had known she would:

"You know, there used to be a time, when you called me Charlie," she smiled ruefully.

He nodded softly, remembering those times, as well.

"There was also a time when you called me Mav, but hey, we left that behind didn't we?" Ethan replied with a bitter sweet smile.

They both knew those times – happy, careless times – had long ceased to be theirs. Times had changed. They had changed. She knew he had ventured on from the Navy to some other, even more exciting job, even though he had never been able to tell her exactly what he did now. And he knew that she was now a senior military advisor, still in liaison with the Navy, but on a level that no longer required her to mingle with 'the boys' like she had in the old days.

As they both sobered a bit to the reality of that, they looked at each other with smiles, knowing that they were both fine with who they were, and with the new lives they led now. Still, it was good to see each other again, if only for a moment.

"So, uhm…what were you doing at the bar tonight?" Ethan eventually asked, and it was a question he had pondered ever since Brandt had pointed her out to him.

"Well, you know that the best of the best always come back here. And somehow I got this strange feeling that one of the best might be around tonight. I never would have dared to hope it would be you, though. That was a surprise."

"Yeah, for me too…I'd been hoping to say hello to you after all that time, so I came here, just on the off chance…you know?"

"Well, then…do we want to go back inside and let your team know that they couldn't have picked a better 'target' for an old fighter pilot like yourself?"

"Hey, who are you calling old?" Ethan joked, immediately forgetting about the rest of her question as he took her hand in his.

"That depends…is this a full date?" Charlie now smiled mysteriously.

Ethan considered this for a moment.

"Do you still have that place up in the hills?"

"You bet. Do you still have your bike?"

"Uh, sorry… can't say that I do."

She saw him squirm, as he pointed towards a car to their far left. And seeing his hands empty of any keys, she realized what he meant.

One team. One car. And the keys were still inside with his team.

"So, unless you want to steal your team's only ride home, you are effectively stuck here, huh?" Charlie shamelessly giggled at his predicament.

"Unless you have an F14 parked behind the bar, I'd say that's a yes."

"Alright, come on, flyboy…I'll give you a ride to my place, you can crash there." She chuckled, as she took his arm and put it around her shoulder, immediately relishing the familiarity of having him this close-by again.

Ethan did not resist her moves, relishing the moment as well, as he spoke up again:

"Good…I'd hate to have to go back inside at this point. There are some things my team just don't need to know about me. It'll keep them on their toes." Ethan smiled slyly, as he let her walk him to her car. And then they took off.

-o-

Inside the bar, Brandt heaved a sigh of surrender.

Benji, he and Jane had been closely watching Ethan and the lady from a side window inside the bar, too far away to hear what was going on outside, but still scrambled against the glass to at least be able to continue to watch - to make sure that Ethan did not simply skip out of this once he thought he was out of their sight.

Because Brandt couldn't help thinking that _somehow_, Ethan was leading him on.

Maybe Ethan had bribed the woman to walk with him outside.

Maybe Ethan had blackmailed the woman to pretend she was going along with this for a few minutes.

Maybe Ethan…

Ah hell, Brandt didn't know what Ethan had done, but he had to have done _something_.

Brandt was sure of it. So he kept watching. Closely.

But as they watched Ethan actually leave with the woman, arms around each other in a way that you would not do with anyone you didn't intend to take home with you, Brandt finally had to give up.

It was time to admit it.

He had lost the bet. He would pay the bill for tonight.

But he'd be damned if he knew how Ethan had done it.

He just knew one thing: He would never again bet against Ethan.

You simply didn't shoot yourself in the foot twice.

THE END


End file.
